A Lullaby for Mon Frère
by fan-nerd
Summary: There's something enchanting and horrific about this whole mess, but she thinks she finally understands her brother and the reason behind his suicide. Route XX.


A/N: I know I'm supposed to be doing so many things, but the idea for this Kagepro fic would not leave me alone. Pertains to Route XX in _Lost Time Memory_ and _Artificial Enemy._

* * *

_**A Lullaby for Mon Frère**_

* * *

The noise pollution of the city and its inhabitants has never been more difficult for her to deal with. People are staring at her—just like always—and she has never wanted solitude more desperately than she does right now.

_Please_, she begs internally, on the verge of tears. _Stop looking at me._

Guilt is going to destroy her; she knows. Everyone can try to say that there's no reason for her to feel this way, but she can't help it. There's no cure for emotionality. Perhaps because of their inherent similarity, she suddenly realizes why he did what he did. She must convince herself that his brilliance in making that choice is not the best option for her parents. They are distraught enough as it is.

She needs help.

No, she wants to disappear.

/

"Stop that…" The boy murmured sternly. She listened. "Why don't you listen to Mom?"

"She doesn't understand me," The girl replied quietly. "You do."

His dark eyes stared into hers, and she felt somewhat strange. "I see." After a moment of silence, he kicked a rock and asked her a question in response. "Do _you_ understand _me_?"

The two of them had been told that they were very similar, but she was young, and couldn't interpret the meaning of the adults' words. How could she possibly be similar to him? He was unique, a rumored prodigy, and she could barely form her vowels correctly. With a start, she realized that she didn't understand him at all. "No. I'm sorry."

"Don't be." He smiled his disgusting smile. "I don't understand myself either."

/

When she didn't receive an answer after several knocks, she opened the door and happened upon the scene.

Horrifyingly beautiful—that was the first description that flew into her mind and nearly out of her mouth.

His unhealthily pale skin was littered with graceful lacerations, blooms of crusted burgundy in loops around his exposed wrists and throat.

For some reason, her lips moved before her eyes could produce tears. "I see," the girl quietly whispered to the one who could hear her no longer. Now she knew, at least, why she had not heard the quiet whirr of a computer, nor the stifled murmurs from behind the door for the past few hours.

If she had opened the door sooner, maybe she could have saved him.

/

He is perfect at everything except socializing. Games. Academics. Sports, even. He's a nonchalant, distant genius, and she admires him greatly, even if she'll never admit it aloud. His loneliness is foil to her own; his is apparent, and hers is disguised in this mask she wears while others flock to her side. Her friends are falsified, and she hates the world a little bit more with every smile she must force.

_Disgusting. This world is absolutely, horrifically boring, _the girl thinks. Maybe, for the first time in her life, she thinks that she is finally beginning to understand.

/

Since they hadn't seen or heard much from him in the last two years, his death brought a strange, expectant finality to the dinner table. She hated this. It was like they'd considered him dead for that whole time, even though he was as much their son as she was their daughter.

"Why are you guys acting like everything should be the same as always?" She was broken, and despairingly lonely. "He's gone, you know. Why can't we talk about this like it happened instead of trying to choke down dinner in complete silence?"

Her mother sighed, eyes rimmed with dark circles. "How else are we supposed to act?" She put down her chopsticks and ignored the food she had hardly touched. "Your brother killed himself. He's been depressed for years – probably even before _she_ died. We offered to help, and tried to give him space, but when you've got that kind of neurosis, sometimes the words of others just don't mean anything."

"So we're just supposed to sit here and stare at each other, pretend he was broken for the last two years, and act indifferent now that he's just gone to sleep for good?" Her laughter was broken and bitter and tears were coursing down her cheeks. "I can't accept that."

"Please," Her father begged quietly, sounding on the verge of tears himself. "Can we all be quiet, just for one night?"

The girl sobbed, nodding because she didn't want to fight any more. She wished more than anything that her brother was still alive.

/

He's clutching the test results in his hand with his usual despairing expression. _One hundred_. It's like a never-ending curse, he says.

She wonders why he hates the flaw of his tragic perfection so very much. It's like everything in the world goes the way he expects it to, every single time. It should make him feel special, but instead he sinks further and further into the darkness.

When he gets older, she thinks that perhaps the influence of bright people in his circle will begin to mend his heart. He murmurs that, inevitably, they will all leave him, for some reason or another. The only thing he is unsure of is how, but the terrible, terrible news is that he's absolutely right, as always. _There's a one-hundred percent chance_, he says.

Death happens to be the burden they place upon him, each parting more difficult on his fragile psyche than the last.

She watches his broken smile fall into pieces as he starts to seclude himself from the world, welcoming ever-elusive death with open arms.

/

"You know, it wouldn't kill you to get some sunshine and exercise every once and a while." The words feel like slime as she says them. It's just what he gets from everyone else. Hopefully, he can read through her – he typically can.

"Thanks," is all he says, but she hears volumes. _Thanks for caring, but this is what I want. You understand, don't you?_ He expects her to get it by now.

Her brother looks gaunt and exhausted; a shell of his former self. His thoughts haunt him as much as his very existence, and she thinks he may have been crying. For some reason, when she contemplates that, her throat gets constricted. "Try to get some sleep, okay?"

His dark eyes haunt her as they look back and his lips cannot even lift into his usual disgusting smile. "Okay."

/

Death must have been so silent and solitary. He'd taken control of his destiny in the only way he knew how, and the bloodied scissors were a mark of his abstract determination that she could not help but admire.

Before his body was taken to be cremated, she folded his mutilated wrists across his lap and murmured her teary farewell. "Good night, brother." To herself, she thought, _may peaceful dreams be with you in death._


End file.
